Stand Up and Be Counted

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED
The Swedish stock in A m e r i c a a n d t h e U n i t e d States
B i c e n t e n n i a l 1976
GUNNAR LONAEUS
Ever since the start of the Great Emigration the relations be­tween
the Swedish people and the Swedish stock in America
have been closely interlocked with our relations to America as
a whole, as it must be in the case of two societies so similar in
structure and general outlook as Sweden and the United States.
I have lived in and visited many European countries, but there
is, as far as I have been able to ascertain, no place—possibly with
the exception of Ireland—where the relations to the transatlantic
part of the national body play such an important role as in Swe­den.
The last letter to Sweden is not written yet; the legendary
million out of five that left are still an emotional if perhaps no
longer a political factor in Swedish life.
For anybody who like me spends a lot of time participating
in the life, work and celebrations of the Swedish community in
the United States it is easy to get the impression that the Swedish
heritage plays an equally important role for the people of Swed­ish
descent in America.
Now, how Swedish is America, and how Swedish is Swedish
America?
The time to stand up and be counted for the American people
is at census taking—every ten years. Or should I say sit down
and be counted, since one can no longer fill out the census ques­tionnaire,
long form, standing on his feet? The public appetite
for statistics seems to be growing exponentially, and the capacity
of wonderful cross-tabulations built into the modern computers
seems to be endless. The many yard-long shelves of soft-cover
publications making up the official census report may appear to
be rather forbidding reading at first glance, but the more you
dig into the endless columns and tabulations the more fascinated
you get.
223
The reports of the Nineteenth U. S. Census, 1970, have been
pouring out of the computers for some time now, and it is hot
stuff indeed for anybody with an interest in the demographic
history of the Swedish element in America. It carries us one
step further in the story told to us by Helge Nelson, by Florence
Jansson, and more recently by Sture Lindmark, Ulf Beijbom,
Emory Lindquist and others, who have tried to use quantitative
methods, largely based on the census material, for their studies of
Swedish immigration to the U . S. and of the integration of the
Swedes in the American society.* May I mention particularly
the two articles by Sture Lindmark in the SWEDISH PIONEER
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY 1965 and 1969, one on the 1930 census
and the other on the End of the Great Immigration. Most in­teresting
in our context today is also Emory Lindquist's article
on the 1960 census in the second issue of the QUARTERLY for
1965. Lindquist points to the gradual decline of the Swedish
share of both the total number of foreign-born in the U. S. and
of what is commonly called "the foreign stock," which in­cludes
also people of foreign and mixed parentage; in other words
first and second generation immigrants.
"The evidence from the census reports forecasts a rapid de­crease
in the number of Swedish-born Americans in this decade,"
says Lindquist on the basis of his analysis of the 1960 and pre­vious
census figures. In respect to the Swedish stock, he fore­casts
a less dramatic decrease, but suggests that "the 1980
* Among these studies are: Helge Nelson, T h e Swedes and the Swedish
Settlements in N o r t h A m e r i c a (Lund, etc., 1943); Florence Janson, T h e
Background of Swedish I m m i g r a t i o n (Chicago, 1931); Sture Lindmark,
"The Swedish-Americans and the Depression Years 1929-1932, SWEDISH
PIONEER HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, XIX, 3-31; • "End of the Great Migra­tion:
decline, restriction, and press reaction 1929-1932," SPHQ, XX, 25-41;
"The Census of 1930 and the Swedes in the United States," SPHQ,
XVI, 216-232; Swedish A m e r i c a 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 3 2 (Chicago and Uppsala, 1971) ;
Ulf Beijbom, "The Oldest Swedish Parish Records in Chicago," SPHQ, XX,
57-75; Swedes in Chicago. A demographic and social study of the 1 8 4 6 -
1880 i m m i g r a t i o n (Chicago and Uppsala, 1971); Emory Lindquist, "The
Swedish-Born Population and the Swedish Stock; The United States Cen­sus
of 1960 and Comparative Data with Some Concluding Observations,"
SPHQ, XVI, 76-90; Sten Carlsson, "Some Aspects of the Swedish Emi­gration
to the United States," SPHQ, XX, 192-203; Emeroy Johnson, "What
an Old Minnesota Church Register Reveals," SPHQ, XVIII, 157-168; Fred
Nilsson, E m i g r a t i o n från Stockholm till N o r d a m e r i k a 1 8 8 0 - 1 8 9 3 (Stock­holm,
1970).
224
census will chronicle only a relatively modest number of per­sons
who will be identified as Swedish stock."
The 1970 census figures, as far as they are now available, bear
out this prediction with great accuracy. There were in 1970 al­together
only 127,070 individuals bom in Sweden counted by the
census computers, a decline of more than 40% compared to the
1960 figure. The number of Swedish-born in 1970 was less than
one-fifth of the all-time high—the 665,183 recorded in 1910. The
Swedish share of all the foreign-born in the country had fallen
to 1.3%, compared to 2.2 in 1960 and to the all-time high of 5.6
at the turn of the century.
The decline in the number of Swedish-born seems to be fairly
evenly distributed over the main regions of Swedish settlement.
Illinois, once ranked as the leading "Swedish" state, no longer
heads the list. The total number of Swedish-born in the state
dropped to 18,091 from 34,606 in 1960, and California emerged
first in a photo finish with 18,472 Swedish-born. The continuing
urbanization of the Swedes has moved New York up to third
place; the Empire State now has 13,534 Swedish-born, while Min­nesota,
currently in the limelight because of "The Emigrants"
movie, records only 12,928 present-time Karl Oskars and Kris­tinas.
Southward trekking to Florida that seemed to have been
the thing to do among U. S. Swedes in the fifties must have lost
appeal in the sixties, as the Swedish-born population in the Sun­shine
State increased only from 6,323 to 6,590 during the decade,
as compared to an 80% increase from 1950 to 1960.
Chicago, which once ranked among the top Swedish cities of
the world, must now seek its counterparts among tiny, old coun­try
market towns, places like Mariefred or Sigtuna, as there
were only 7,061 Swedish-born here [in Chicago] on census day
1970, down from 23,316 ten years earlier. But there were still
20,743 Chicagoans indicating Swedish as their mother tongue,
including 11,868 of foreign or mixed parentage, and 1,814 "na­tive
of native parentage," which is third or fourth generation, so
there seems still to be ample background for a Swedish language
newspaper in Chicago. In the whole Chicago Standard Metropol­itan
Statistical area—Greater Chicago in other words—there
were 13,418 Swedish-born, of whom 1,264 still had foreign—and
presumably Swedish—citizenship. Among the 13,418 were 114
225
Swedish-born Negroes, all naturalized, and 20 of "other races"
(whatever that may stand for. Any Swedish-born redskins
about?)
New York City has actually passed Chicago as the number
one Swedish city in America. There were 9,862 Swedish-born
within the city limits, of whom 1,881 had foreign citizenship.
But only 12,187 in New York City listed Swedish as their mother
tongue. In Greater New York, the Standard Metropolitan Statis­tical
area, there were, however, altogether 22,462 who regarded
Swedish as their mother tongue.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, the Minnesota Twin Cities—a classical
Swedish stronghold—had only 6,883 Swedish-born in 1970. Still,
it was the strongest foreign group in the city with the exception
of the Canadians. In the City of Minneapolis only, the Swedes
were by far the strongest foreign-born group with a total of 3,618.
However, more than 50,000 in the Twin Cities gave Swedish as
their mother tongue.
To reply to the question "How Swedish is America?" we are
of course interested not only in the Swedish-born, but also in
later-generation Swedish descendants who can be presumed to
be aware of their Swedish ancestry. The census reports provide
us here with the category "foreign stock," including the foreign-born
and the native-born American population of foreign or
mixed parentage. When people of foreign parentage have par­ents
who were born in different countries, they are classified
according to the father's country of birth. In 1970 there were
9.6 million foreign-born and just under 24 million of foreign
or mixed parentage in the U. S. which puts the total of "foreign
stock" to about 34 millions. So the melting pot still seems to be
bubbling.
If we add to the 127,070 Swedish-born 679,068 of Swedish and
mixed parentage we end up with a "Swedish stock" population
of 806,138 in 1970. It is the first time in this century that the
total Swedish stock has fallen below a million; in the peak years
around 1930 it counted a little over one-and-a-half million. The
Swedish element was 2.4% of the total foreign stock in 1970, a
decrease from 3.1'/r in 1960 and from 4.2'/ in 1910, which was
the peak year in this respect.
The development seems to be very much the same for the
226
other Scandinavian peoples. During the last decade, the Nor­wegian
share of the total foreign stock decreased from 2.3% to
1.8%, and the corresponding Danish figures are 1.2% and 1.0%.
Taken together, the Scandinavians represent 5.2% of the foreign
stock in America. This is, improbable as it may seem, a higher
percentage than the Irish share, which is 4.3%, and is surpassed
among the European nations only by the British, the Germans,
the Poles, the Russians and the Italians. The Swedish share of
the farm population of foreign stock is, at 5.5%, more than double
our share of the total foreign stock. Still, there were in 1970
only 48,526 people of Swedish stock in this category; the Swedes
are becoming ever more urbanized: 76% of them lived in urban
areas in 1970, as compared with 74% in 1960 and 56% in 1910.
The figures I have quoted represent only a random sampling
of the tremendously rich material that the census reports pre­sent
to the student of the Swedish and Scandinavian ingredients
in the melting pot. I think it would be worth while to extract
all material of Swedish interest in the census reports and to pub­lish
it in the form of a Swedish-American Statistical Handbook,
maybe as a special issue of the PIONEER HISTORICAL QUARTERLY.
There is also a tremendous amount of material of local interest
that I have only been able to hint at today. The basic demograph­ic
facts represent after all the foundations on which all organized
attempts to preserve the Swedish heritage in America must be
built. Now, in spite of the declining trend of the Swedish-born
and the Swedish stock that can be read clearly and loudly from
the census figures of 1970, I think there will be more than ample
population background for at least another decade of active
Swedish-American "föreningsarbete" along the traditional lines,
catering mostly to the first and second generation. Judging from
the statistics on Swedish as mother tongue I am also fairly opti­mistic
when it comes to the survival of the Swedish language
press for another decade or two. A little earlier tonight I ven­tured
to pose the question, "How Swedish is Swedish-America?".
Well, I would be surprised if more than between ten and fifteen
per cent of the 836,000 first or second generation Americans of
Swedish descent are members of any of our clubs, lodges and
associations. And I also think that a considerable part of the
Swedish-speaking stock is still untapped by the Swedish lan-
227
guage papers. There is nothing in the census figures that need
inspire a feeling of gloom, of a decline and fall of Swedish-
America.
Still, it is of course true, as Emory Lindquist says in his ar­ticle
of 1965, that the survival of the Swedish heritage in Amer­ica
will in the long run depend on the interest that can be cre­ated
among late generation Americans of Swedish ancestry,
whose contacts with the customs and culture of the old country
are less frequent or less direct.
Emory Lindquist, in the concluding part of his article, lists
an impressive number and an impressive variation of ways to
reach this group of people. It all adds up to a catalogue of the
Swedish-American and Scandinavian organizations, of the at­tempts
made to record and preserve the Swedish legacy, includ­ing
the Swedish language, and of the bilateral institutions aim­ing
at the study of the Swedish immigration to the United States,
like Emigrantinstitutet in Växjö and Emigrantregistret in Karl­stad.
Three years from now there will be a time such as never be­fore
to stand up and be counted for the nations within the na­tion:
the American Revolution Bicentennial of 1976. The cele­brations
of two hundred years of American independence all
through the year 1976 will no doubt take into account not only
the events that led to the signing of the Declaration of Inde­pendence,
but will also review the development that brought the
fledging nation at the outskirts of the known world all the way
to the dominating position it occupies in today's world both
economically and politically.
What we are going to see in 1976 is, I think, a reaffirmation
from.the major national groups of their loyalty first to the United
States, the country they or their ancestors chose for building
a new life, but also, and in equally warm terms, to the old world
heritage each of them has contributed to the cultural pattern
of the United States.
There are many reasons, I feel, for the Americans of Swedish
descent to take active part in this affirmation of dual loyalties,
that is such a fine and valuable strain in American life. The
most important one is the fact that the Bicentennial will pre­sent
a unique opportunity to increase the awareness among the
228
Swedish-Americans themselves of their national background and
of the contributions they and their ancestors have given to the
material and spiritual civilization in America, an opportunity
that will occur at a moment when demographic development will
have made the Swedish element less easily identifiable. One
other reason is the desirability of a Swedish presence in the ex­change
process between the different national groups that the
activities around the Bicentennial will bring about. This ex­change
between fellow Americans, this cross-fertilization between
different ethnic legacies, will no doubt bring better understanding
between the national groups and make the general public aware
of the positive effects for America as a whole of the attempts to
preserve her cultural pluralism.
I need not remind this group of the many cultural, scientific
and industrial achievements that make up the Swedish contri­bution
to American development, or of the many thousands of
outstanding personalities that made them possible. The Swedes
have worked on the development of this continent longer than
most other groups; our colonial history did not end with the
eclipse of Swedish political power in colonial America: the set­tlers
stayed, and some of their descendants were present at the
creation of American nationhood. The Swedes had been in the
country for almost a century and a half at the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. The Swedish religious heritage
has been continuously present in America since 1638.
I think therefore that anybody of Swedish descent may be en­titled
to speak with humble pride of his heritage in 1976.
For various reasons, the official plans for the 1976 celebra­tions
are still somewhat vague. As you know, the plans for a
world fair in Philadelphia were abandoned after years of plan­ning,
and the basic idea now seems to be for a number of local
events all over the country through the year 1976. The American
Revolution Bicentennial Commission has, however, recently been
reorganized, and there is reason to believe that the planning will
be carried on with greater efficiency in the future.
I think that time has now come for Swedish America to start
planning for participation in the Bicentennial celebrations. It
need not necessarily be a process where a central master plan
is carried over on the regional and local level. On the contrary;
229
I think that every Swedish-American lodge, glee club or folk
dancing society should put planning for 1976 on its working pro­gram
or appoint special committees for the Bicentennial.
Still it is an achievement of tremendous importance that we
have, since early this year, the core of a future nationwide Swed­ish
organization in the new Swedish Council of America, a co­operative
effort by the three main Swedish cultural organizations,
now in the process of widening its scope. The Council, I think,
can serve very useful purposes in coordinating the Swedish par­ticipation
in the Bicentennial. It would be an historic achievement
indeed if Swedish America could speak with one voice when
the United States steps into the third century of her history. I
think also that the Council could play an important role in spon­soring
different kinds of publications and other educational
material prepared for 1976. May I mention as an example a
very extensive chronicle of Swedish-American relations through
the centuries, authored by Allan Kastrup, former head of the
American Swedish News Exchange, which is now being pre­pared
for publication.
The participation in the Bicentennial is first and foremost a
challenge to the Swedish-American community herself; any
Swedish government participation will have to materialize on
the diplomatic level. But I think I can speak for everybody in­volved
in Swedish government or information activities in Amer­ica
when I assure you that we will try to work with you and
support you in every possible way to make the Swedish-Amer­ican
voice in 1976 a proud and confident one.
230

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STAND UP AND BE COUNTED
The Swedish stock in A m e r i c a a n d t h e U n i t e d States
B i c e n t e n n i a l 1976
GUNNAR LONAEUS
Ever since the start of the Great Emigration the relations be­tween
the Swedish people and the Swedish stock in America
have been closely interlocked with our relations to America as
a whole, as it must be in the case of two societies so similar in
structure and general outlook as Sweden and the United States.
I have lived in and visited many European countries, but there
is, as far as I have been able to ascertain, no place—possibly with
the exception of Ireland—where the relations to the transatlantic
part of the national body play such an important role as in Swe­den.
The last letter to Sweden is not written yet; the legendary
million out of five that left are still an emotional if perhaps no
longer a political factor in Swedish life.
For anybody who like me spends a lot of time participating
in the life, work and celebrations of the Swedish community in
the United States it is easy to get the impression that the Swedish
heritage plays an equally important role for the people of Swed­ish
descent in America.
Now, how Swedish is America, and how Swedish is Swedish
America?
The time to stand up and be counted for the American people
is at census taking—every ten years. Or should I say sit down
and be counted, since one can no longer fill out the census ques­tionnaire,
long form, standing on his feet? The public appetite
for statistics seems to be growing exponentially, and the capacity
of wonderful cross-tabulations built into the modern computers
seems to be endless. The many yard-long shelves of soft-cover
publications making up the official census report may appear to
be rather forbidding reading at first glance, but the more you
dig into the endless columns and tabulations the more fascinated
you get.
223
The reports of the Nineteenth U. S. Census, 1970, have been
pouring out of the computers for some time now, and it is hot
stuff indeed for anybody with an interest in the demographic
history of the Swedish element in America. It carries us one
step further in the story told to us by Helge Nelson, by Florence
Jansson, and more recently by Sture Lindmark, Ulf Beijbom,
Emory Lindquist and others, who have tried to use quantitative
methods, largely based on the census material, for their studies of
Swedish immigration to the U . S. and of the integration of the
Swedes in the American society.* May I mention particularly
the two articles by Sture Lindmark in the SWEDISH PIONEER
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY 1965 and 1969, one on the 1930 census
and the other on the End of the Great Immigration. Most in­teresting
in our context today is also Emory Lindquist's article
on the 1960 census in the second issue of the QUARTERLY for
1965. Lindquist points to the gradual decline of the Swedish
share of both the total number of foreign-born in the U. S. and
of what is commonly called "the foreign stock," which in­cludes
also people of foreign and mixed parentage; in other words
first and second generation immigrants.
"The evidence from the census reports forecasts a rapid de­crease
in the number of Swedish-born Americans in this decade,"
says Lindquist on the basis of his analysis of the 1960 and pre­vious
census figures. In respect to the Swedish stock, he fore­casts
a less dramatic decrease, but suggests that "the 1980
* Among these studies are: Helge Nelson, T h e Swedes and the Swedish
Settlements in N o r t h A m e r i c a (Lund, etc., 1943); Florence Janson, T h e
Background of Swedish I m m i g r a t i o n (Chicago, 1931); Sture Lindmark,
"The Swedish-Americans and the Depression Years 1929-1932, SWEDISH
PIONEER HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, XIX, 3-31; • "End of the Great Migra­tion:
decline, restriction, and press reaction 1929-1932," SPHQ, XX, 25-41;
"The Census of 1930 and the Swedes in the United States," SPHQ,
XVI, 216-232; Swedish A m e r i c a 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 3 2 (Chicago and Uppsala, 1971) ;
Ulf Beijbom, "The Oldest Swedish Parish Records in Chicago," SPHQ, XX,
57-75; Swedes in Chicago. A demographic and social study of the 1 8 4 6 -
1880 i m m i g r a t i o n (Chicago and Uppsala, 1971); Emory Lindquist, "The
Swedish-Born Population and the Swedish Stock; The United States Cen­sus
of 1960 and Comparative Data with Some Concluding Observations,"
SPHQ, XVI, 76-90; Sten Carlsson, "Some Aspects of the Swedish Emi­gration
to the United States," SPHQ, XX, 192-203; Emeroy Johnson, "What
an Old Minnesota Church Register Reveals," SPHQ, XVIII, 157-168; Fred
Nilsson, E m i g r a t i o n från Stockholm till N o r d a m e r i k a 1 8 8 0 - 1 8 9 3 (Stock­holm,
1970).
224
census will chronicle only a relatively modest number of per­sons
who will be identified as Swedish stock."
The 1970 census figures, as far as they are now available, bear
out this prediction with great accuracy. There were in 1970 al­together
only 127,070 individuals bom in Sweden counted by the
census computers, a decline of more than 40% compared to the
1960 figure. The number of Swedish-born in 1970 was less than
one-fifth of the all-time high—the 665,183 recorded in 1910. The
Swedish share of all the foreign-born in the country had fallen
to 1.3%, compared to 2.2 in 1960 and to the all-time high of 5.6
at the turn of the century.
The decline in the number of Swedish-born seems to be fairly
evenly distributed over the main regions of Swedish settlement.
Illinois, once ranked as the leading "Swedish" state, no longer
heads the list. The total number of Swedish-born in the state
dropped to 18,091 from 34,606 in 1960, and California emerged
first in a photo finish with 18,472 Swedish-born. The continuing
urbanization of the Swedes has moved New York up to third
place; the Empire State now has 13,534 Swedish-born, while Min­nesota,
currently in the limelight because of "The Emigrants"
movie, records only 12,928 present-time Karl Oskars and Kris­tinas.
Southward trekking to Florida that seemed to have been
the thing to do among U. S. Swedes in the fifties must have lost
appeal in the sixties, as the Swedish-born population in the Sun­shine
State increased only from 6,323 to 6,590 during the decade,
as compared to an 80% increase from 1950 to 1960.
Chicago, which once ranked among the top Swedish cities of
the world, must now seek its counterparts among tiny, old coun­try
market towns, places like Mariefred or Sigtuna, as there
were only 7,061 Swedish-born here [in Chicago] on census day
1970, down from 23,316 ten years earlier. But there were still
20,743 Chicagoans indicating Swedish as their mother tongue,
including 11,868 of foreign or mixed parentage, and 1,814 "na­tive
of native parentage," which is third or fourth generation, so
there seems still to be ample background for a Swedish language
newspaper in Chicago. In the whole Chicago Standard Metropol­itan
Statistical area—Greater Chicago in other words—there
were 13,418 Swedish-born, of whom 1,264 still had foreign—and
presumably Swedish—citizenship. Among the 13,418 were 114
225
Swedish-born Negroes, all naturalized, and 20 of "other races"
(whatever that may stand for. Any Swedish-born redskins
about?)
New York City has actually passed Chicago as the number
one Swedish city in America. There were 9,862 Swedish-born
within the city limits, of whom 1,881 had foreign citizenship.
But only 12,187 in New York City listed Swedish as their mother
tongue. In Greater New York, the Standard Metropolitan Statis­tical
area, there were, however, altogether 22,462 who regarded
Swedish as their mother tongue.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, the Minnesota Twin Cities—a classical
Swedish stronghold—had only 6,883 Swedish-born in 1970. Still,
it was the strongest foreign group in the city with the exception
of the Canadians. In the City of Minneapolis only, the Swedes
were by far the strongest foreign-born group with a total of 3,618.
However, more than 50,000 in the Twin Cities gave Swedish as
their mother tongue.
To reply to the question "How Swedish is America?" we are
of course interested not only in the Swedish-born, but also in
later-generation Swedish descendants who can be presumed to
be aware of their Swedish ancestry. The census reports provide
us here with the category "foreign stock," including the foreign-born
and the native-born American population of foreign or
mixed parentage. When people of foreign parentage have par­ents
who were born in different countries, they are classified
according to the father's country of birth. In 1970 there were
9.6 million foreign-born and just under 24 million of foreign
or mixed parentage in the U. S. which puts the total of "foreign
stock" to about 34 millions. So the melting pot still seems to be
bubbling.
If we add to the 127,070 Swedish-born 679,068 of Swedish and
mixed parentage we end up with a "Swedish stock" population
of 806,138 in 1970. It is the first time in this century that the
total Swedish stock has fallen below a million; in the peak years
around 1930 it counted a little over one-and-a-half million. The
Swedish element was 2.4% of the total foreign stock in 1970, a
decrease from 3.1'/r in 1960 and from 4.2'/ in 1910, which was
the peak year in this respect.
The development seems to be very much the same for the
226
other Scandinavian peoples. During the last decade, the Nor­wegian
share of the total foreign stock decreased from 2.3% to
1.8%, and the corresponding Danish figures are 1.2% and 1.0%.
Taken together, the Scandinavians represent 5.2% of the foreign
stock in America. This is, improbable as it may seem, a higher
percentage than the Irish share, which is 4.3%, and is surpassed
among the European nations only by the British, the Germans,
the Poles, the Russians and the Italians. The Swedish share of
the farm population of foreign stock is, at 5.5%, more than double
our share of the total foreign stock. Still, there were in 1970
only 48,526 people of Swedish stock in this category; the Swedes
are becoming ever more urbanized: 76% of them lived in urban
areas in 1970, as compared with 74% in 1960 and 56% in 1910.
The figures I have quoted represent only a random sampling
of the tremendously rich material that the census reports pre­sent
to the student of the Swedish and Scandinavian ingredients
in the melting pot. I think it would be worth while to extract
all material of Swedish interest in the census reports and to pub­lish
it in the form of a Swedish-American Statistical Handbook,
maybe as a special issue of the PIONEER HISTORICAL QUARTERLY.
There is also a tremendous amount of material of local interest
that I have only been able to hint at today. The basic demograph­ic
facts represent after all the foundations on which all organized
attempts to preserve the Swedish heritage in America must be
built. Now, in spite of the declining trend of the Swedish-born
and the Swedish stock that can be read clearly and loudly from
the census figures of 1970, I think there will be more than ample
population background for at least another decade of active
Swedish-American "föreningsarbete" along the traditional lines,
catering mostly to the first and second generation. Judging from
the statistics on Swedish as mother tongue I am also fairly opti­mistic
when it comes to the survival of the Swedish language
press for another decade or two. A little earlier tonight I ven­tured
to pose the question, "How Swedish is Swedish-America?".
Well, I would be surprised if more than between ten and fifteen
per cent of the 836,000 first or second generation Americans of
Swedish descent are members of any of our clubs, lodges and
associations. And I also think that a considerable part of the
Swedish-speaking stock is still untapped by the Swedish lan-
227
guage papers. There is nothing in the census figures that need
inspire a feeling of gloom, of a decline and fall of Swedish-
America.
Still, it is of course true, as Emory Lindquist says in his ar­ticle
of 1965, that the survival of the Swedish heritage in Amer­ica
will in the long run depend on the interest that can be cre­ated
among late generation Americans of Swedish ancestry,
whose contacts with the customs and culture of the old country
are less frequent or less direct.
Emory Lindquist, in the concluding part of his article, lists
an impressive number and an impressive variation of ways to
reach this group of people. It all adds up to a catalogue of the
Swedish-American and Scandinavian organizations, of the at­tempts
made to record and preserve the Swedish legacy, includ­ing
the Swedish language, and of the bilateral institutions aim­ing
at the study of the Swedish immigration to the United States,
like Emigrantinstitutet in Växjö and Emigrantregistret in Karl­stad.
Three years from now there will be a time such as never be­fore
to stand up and be counted for the nations within the na­tion:
the American Revolution Bicentennial of 1976. The cele­brations
of two hundred years of American independence all
through the year 1976 will no doubt take into account not only
the events that led to the signing of the Declaration of Inde­pendence,
but will also review the development that brought the
fledging nation at the outskirts of the known world all the way
to the dominating position it occupies in today's world both
economically and politically.
What we are going to see in 1976 is, I think, a reaffirmation
from.the major national groups of their loyalty first to the United
States, the country they or their ancestors chose for building
a new life, but also, and in equally warm terms, to the old world
heritage each of them has contributed to the cultural pattern
of the United States.
There are many reasons, I feel, for the Americans of Swedish
descent to take active part in this affirmation of dual loyalties,
that is such a fine and valuable strain in American life. The
most important one is the fact that the Bicentennial will pre­sent
a unique opportunity to increase the awareness among the
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Swedish-Americans themselves of their national background and
of the contributions they and their ancestors have given to the
material and spiritual civilization in America, an opportunity
that will occur at a moment when demographic development will
have made the Swedish element less easily identifiable. One
other reason is the desirability of a Swedish presence in the ex­change
process between the different national groups that the
activities around the Bicentennial will bring about. This ex­change
between fellow Americans, this cross-fertilization between
different ethnic legacies, will no doubt bring better understanding
between the national groups and make the general public aware
of the positive effects for America as a whole of the attempts to
preserve her cultural pluralism.
I need not remind this group of the many cultural, scientific
and industrial achievements that make up the Swedish contri­bution
to American development, or of the many thousands of
outstanding personalities that made them possible. The Swedes
have worked on the development of this continent longer than
most other groups; our colonial history did not end with the
eclipse of Swedish political power in colonial America: the set­tlers
stayed, and some of their descendants were present at the
creation of American nationhood. The Swedes had been in the
country for almost a century and a half at the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. The Swedish religious heritage
has been continuously present in America since 1638.
I think therefore that anybody of Swedish descent may be en­titled
to speak with humble pride of his heritage in 1976.
For various reasons, the official plans for the 1976 celebra­tions
are still somewhat vague. As you know, the plans for a
world fair in Philadelphia were abandoned after years of plan­ning,
and the basic idea now seems to be for a number of local
events all over the country through the year 1976. The American
Revolution Bicentennial Commission has, however, recently been
reorganized, and there is reason to believe that the planning will
be carried on with greater efficiency in the future.
I think that time has now come for Swedish America to start
planning for participation in the Bicentennial celebrations. It
need not necessarily be a process where a central master plan
is carried over on the regional and local level. On the contrary;
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I think that every Swedish-American lodge, glee club or folk
dancing society should put planning for 1976 on its working pro­gram
or appoint special committees for the Bicentennial.
Still it is an achievement of tremendous importance that we
have, since early this year, the core of a future nationwide Swed­ish
organization in the new Swedish Council of America, a co­operative
effort by the three main Swedish cultural organizations,
now in the process of widening its scope. The Council, I think,
can serve very useful purposes in coordinating the Swedish par­ticipation
in the Bicentennial. It would be an historic achievement
indeed if Swedish America could speak with one voice when
the United States steps into the third century of her history. I
think also that the Council could play an important role in spon­soring
different kinds of publications and other educational
material prepared for 1976. May I mention as an example a
very extensive chronicle of Swedish-American relations through
the centuries, authored by Allan Kastrup, former head of the
American Swedish News Exchange, which is now being pre­pared
for publication.
The participation in the Bicentennial is first and foremost a
challenge to the Swedish-American community herself; any
Swedish government participation will have to materialize on
the diplomatic level. But I think I can speak for everybody in­volved
in Swedish government or information activities in Amer­ica
when I assure you that we will try to work with you and
support you in every possible way to make the Swedish-Amer­ican
voice in 1976 a proud and confident one.
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